Luckpenny Land (22 page)

‘No, I hadn’t.’

‘You told Annie a deliberate lie?’

‘She had to see sense.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted her. Annie was a good woman, hard-working, salt of the earth as you might say. Same as our Meg is, only Annie weren’t nearly so rebellious.’

Lanky saw it all now. He saw that Joe had been prepared to lie to get his way, fooling himself that it might be the truth. He’d ruined Lanky’s entire life, stolen the girl he had loved.

Oh, he’d come to love his own dear wife, Mary, and they’d been happy together. But it was true that Annie had remained special. Mary had understood and seen no threat in the sweet memory, for that’s all it was in the end.

Whereas Joe had let the hatred and jealousy grow inside him like a canker. He had never forgiven Lanky for the fact that Annie still loved him, even to her dying day. He had won her in body, but never captured her heart. Getting Broombank land would have been revenge, as well as economically useful.

Lanky pulled himself upright in the chair and faced his old adversary with pride. ‘Meg may be Annie’s daughter, but she’s also yours so not so easily squashed. She has a strength and a spirit that even you can’t break, Joe Turner, try as you might. She’ll follow her own plan in life, will Meg, not yours. Mark my words, she’s a match for you any day.’

Chapter Eleven

The moment Meg walked in her own front door she knew she’d delayed too long.

Sally Ann met her in the kitchen with the news that Effie had run off again. ‘You’d best start looking for her. I’ve searched every corner of the house and barns and can find no sign. I tried to keep an eye on her but she’s as smart as a ferret.’

‘It’s my fault, Sal. Don’t blame yourself.’

Meg called for Rust and with dog at heel set off down the cart track, calling Effie’s name. Oh, why hadn’t she come back for her sooner, taken her to Broombank last night? Yet she’d had no reason to know then that Lanky would be ill and need her to stay.

Effie should have waited. Why hadn’t she?

Because Meg had promised not to leave her and she had broken that promise. Probably no one had ever kept a promise to her in the past so why should she be surprised if a perfect stranger let her down?

Meg trekked on, longing to find some sign of the once noisome Effie. Used to solitary walking, she never felt lonely as a rule. Now, for the first time, she did. The fells and dales, so named by the early Norse settlers, looked more empty and bleak than they ever had before. The cracks and fissures forming steps in the rocks, punctuated periodically with patches of green, offered a deceptively easy climb to the top. Try it and your shaking legs would be the first to spot the mistake. But Effie was ignorant of which parts of this remote landscape could be traversed and which should be left well alone.

Responsibility for these two people, one an old friend, the other a new, weighed heavily upon her. Why couldn’t she be more like Kath? Kath did not approve of responsibility. She said everyone thought only of themselves and that Meg should learn to do the same. It was not a belief Meg could ever subscribe to.

But supposing Effie were in trouble? One slip on those heights and you were done for. In her mind’s eye, Meg saw the small child lying at the bottom of a crag like a broken doll.

‘Effie!’
she called out, her voice snatched and lost by the wind. Oh, Jack. If only you were here, you could help me look. A lump came into her throat. Where was he? Was he in danger? Would they send him to France? Perhaps she shouldn’t even be thinking of taking on an evacuee when all she wanted to do was pack her bags and go to him, wherever he was, so they could be married.

If only that were possible.

The old oaks and yews, their trunks twisted into grotesque shapes by the wind, whined and creaked, making her shiver. Meg searched till the October light was fading from the sky but could find no sign of the tiny figure. Her foot skidded on a stone and she pitched forward on to her knees. Tears stung her eyes as she picked the shale from her bloodied flesh. She was tired. Time to call it a day and go home. She’d go and see Mr Lipstock in the morning. ‘Come on, Rust. Supper time.’

Sally Ann met her at the door. ‘She’s back.’

Pleasure and relief flooded through Meg and she grasped Sally Ann’s hands with delight. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Then she trusts us after all.’

Her sister-in-law looked doubtful. ‘Joe found her. I think she was lost, and very frightened. It’s a big world out there.’ Sal nodded in the direction of the stairs. ‘He’s with her now. Says we are not to disturb him while he teaches her the meaning of gratitude.’

Meg needed no further warning. Very swiftly and quietly she flew up the stairs. Her hand was trembling as she lifted the sneck
_.
of the bedroom door. She had no wish to stir Joe’s temper further but nor had he any right to chastise the little evacuee, if that was what he was about.

When she pushed open the door Meg did not immediately take in the scene before her. It fell upon her eyes bit by bit like a disjointed jig-saw puzzle.

Joe’s arm raised. The silhouette of his lean body against the blue of the night sky framed in the window beyond. The flash of something long and leathery. The night light by the bed shining upon a shivering white body and over it all a terrible silence broken only by a rhythmic, repetitive thwack.

‘
No
!’ Meg flew across the tiny bedroom, reaching for the belt that Joe held high above his head, ready to stroke its telling cruelty upon the torn flesh below. ‘
No
!’

She was thrust fiercely aside so that she fell, knocking her head against the window frame. But she was up again as the belt met its target a second time. Not a sound came from Effie, lying curled up in her clean vest and knickers on the makeshift bed, arms about her head. Had she mercifully lost her senses? Meg grabbed for the raised arm and this time grasped the belt firmly enough to twist it hard and wrench it from her father’s grasp.

Joe Turner swung round upon his daughter and knocked her flying with the flat of one hand. It sent her into a crumpled heap in the corner of the small room, bringing the sharp sting of tears to her eyes as her head banged on the floor. Pain shot through her and the world tilted and turned black, fired by a kaleidoscope of colour in her head. But Meg did not care. She held tenaciously to the lethal belt beneath her.

‘Stop that.’ The force of the quiet voice from the door was electrifying. Joe, one hand on Meg’s hair ready to drag her to her feet, stilled and half turned to face his daughter-in-law.

Sally Ann was standing in the doorway with a rifle in her hand. It was no more than an air gun used to pop rabbits but it could do considerable damage at this distance. Joe, one eye on the gun, attempted to brazen it out.

‘There’s no ammunition in that thing.’

‘Try it and see.’

For a long moment everyone remained frozen. Joe felt a touch of admiration for Sally Ann. She was a fine figure of a woman standing there like some warrior queen with her red hair all about her head. It took guts to take up a gun against him. He gave no such consideration to his daughter whom he dismissed as a trouble-maker, beyond his control, but he released Meg’s hair and she fell back upon the floorboards with a quiet sob. Before anyone could move, Joe had picked up Effie from the bed and shaken her like a limp white rabbit before tossing her back upon the thin mattress. ‘Learn to do as you’re told, brat. If I say you do summat, you jump to and do it. Have you got that?’ He did not wait for any answer, which was just as well since the child could not have given one.
 

When he had gone Meg struggled to her feet and hurried to Effie’s side. She found the child curled into a ball tighter than ever, eyes wide open, unblinking. Beads of blood showed on the white underclothing but she made no sound. No tears fell and not a muscle twitched. It was as if she did not feel any pain.

‘Dear God, he’s killed her!’ Meg cried.

‘No,’ Sally Ann said. ‘She’s in deep shock. I’ll fetch some salt water to clean her up. You stay with her. When she comes out of it she’ll need a friend.’

It was perhaps to the child’s advantage that she did not come out of it until the next morning. Even then she did not cry and Meg found her acceptance of the chastisement almost more terrible to bear than the act itself.

Effie was sitting up in bed when Meg woke. Gently, she held a cup of water to the child’s parched lips. ‘Are you all right? Did he hurt you?’ Inane remarks, but what else was there to say?

Effie gave a little shake of her head, denying the obvious truth. ‘But I still won’t milk his soddin’ cows.’

Meg gasped, then reluctantly laughed. ‘Are you saying you took a beating rather than milk cows?’

She would have to speak to Effie again about her language. It wasn’t proper for so young a child to have so filthy a mouth. Oh, but it was wonderful to see that even in these terrible circumstances the girl’s spirit was not broken. She was glad about that.

‘I’ve had a beating afore, and I don’t like them monsters.’
 

Something hardened deep inside Meg and a resolution was born. ‘Well, you’ll not be beaten again. You and I, Effie, are moving out of here.’ Eager to put thought into action, she reached for her brown suitcase in the closet.

‘Where we going?’

‘You’ll see. A place where there is only kindness and love, not anger and beatings.’

‘Are there any cows?’

Meg looked at the resolute, pointed face and started to laugh. ‘You might find, in time, that cows can be more appealing than your fellow men. Come on, can you get up, do you think? I’d like to be out of here before it gets light if possible. Can you walk?’

‘Oh, aye.’ The child winced. ‘I could dance a jig.’

They managed a steady pace up the path to Broombank, carrying the suitcase, Effie’s brown paper bag and gasmask which she would not part with, pushing Meg’s bicycle between them. It was all they owned in the world. Padding along between them came Rust, where he meant always to stay.

Meg had left a note on the kitchen mantelshelf for Sally Ann, explaining where she’d gone. But she did not expect Joe to come after her. She knew that once she had left home, he would never allow her to return.

She was entirely dependent now upon Lanky’s goodwill, but felt certain of a warm welcome.

Breakfast at number six, Southview Villas, was the most informal meal of the day. Alice, the little maid, would set out tureens on the long sideboard, rather as if for a grand country house-party, and everyone was permitted to help themselves. It was folly though to arrive more than a moment after the gong sounded for the number of sausages, kidneys or slivers of bacon was strictly limited and a latecomer ran the risk of going without. There was no question of the dishes being refilled.

Kath, however, found she could not face even the smell of food first thing in the morning so she made a point of waiting until her fellow guests had departed to their various shops and offices before slipping into the breakfast room to nibble on a slice of dry toast.

She was thus engaged, wondering if the nausea would ever pass and if she could face coffee this morning, when her aunt strode into the room.

Ruby Nelson never walked. She marched, strode or flounced, head thrust forward as if in a hurry to get where she was going. She was dressed this morning in a dark green spotted dress with a square neck and rows of beads reminiscent of the roaring twenties, in which period, apparently, she had bloomed.

‘You’ll be off out job hunting again today, my dear?’

Kath agreed that she would, though she had as yet, made not a single enquiry. She felt far too ill. Whoever had said pregnant women bloomed must have been mad. Or a man.

‘I heard they might be wanting some kitchen help at the Kardomah.’

‘I’ll go and ask.’ Kath finished her toast and decided against the coffee. Perhaps later.

She’d reached the dining-room door when Ruby asked her more pertinent question, very sweetly, as always. ‘Was that you in the bathroom this morning, dear?’

‘I always go to the bathroom in the morning.’

‘You sounded dreadfully ill. Not sickening for anything, I trust?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Ruby adopted her sympathetic expression. ‘That’s all right then. I do hope you cleaned the basin down when you’d finished.’

Kath’s hand found the polished doorknob and got the door open somehow. She grabbed her coat from the hallstand and left the house as quickly as she could without turning to say goodbye. That way she could avoid the suspicion in her aunt’s eyes.

The expression in Ruby Nelson’s eyes was more that of shrewd speculation and frowning disapproval. She didn’t trust that little hussy, not one bit, she thought. What Rosemary was thinking of to send her here in that condition she could not imagine. Did she imagine that her beloved sister had been born yesterday? Old maid she might be, but she could recognise a girl in trouble when she saw one. Something must be done about it, and quick. Scandal was bad for business and Ruby had no intention of risking it.

‘I’ll not have her on my plate,’ she announced, wagging a finger at the closed door. ‘Dear me, no.’ And spinning on her heel she marched to the kitchen and flung open the door. ‘Alice. Get this table cleared. I have some letters to write.’